


closed doors, locked in.

by apoligeticisms



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bisexuality, Burnout - Freeform, Existential Crisis, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Loneliness, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Roommates, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, florida is not a romantic place heat waves lied to you all, mature rating for language and thematic elements, mutual unrequited pining, the american education system is awful actually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27611930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apoligeticisms/pseuds/apoligeticisms
Summary: Darryl Noveschosch is twenty-five years old and living in the same small town he has his entire life. He’s learned not to expect much. Not everyone gets to be extraordinary, and that’s alright. He’s come to terms with that.Time hardly matters when every day’s the same, right?
Relationships: Zak Ahmed & Darryl Noveschosch, Zak Ahmed/Darryl Noveschosch
Comments: 14
Kudos: 63





	closed doors, locked in.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I'd like to preface this work by stating the fact that I personally find RPF as a whole to be somewhat embarrassing. I have written platonic RPF before though, and a sizable amount of fanfiction for various other things throughout the years.
> 
> The main reasons I have for publishing this work are as follows: Firstly, I believe that happytwt/the fanbase surrounding Skeppy and Bad deserve a longer work with their content creators as the focus for once. They deserve more than one, honestly. Secondly, I thought that it might be nice to expunge some of my own experiences and feelings using personalities that I am already familiar with. That’s why I write fanfiction at all, honestly. Sorry if that sounds a bit selfish or anything, but it’s the honest truth.
> 
> I am in no way shape or form assuming anything about the real people this story takes inspiration from. I do not personally ship them and I could care less about whether or not they are in a relationship (and honestly doubt that they are or will be at any point in the future). I have nothing but respect for either of them.
> 
> This work will not contain any smut, so if that’s what you’re looking for...this probably isn’t what you’re looking for. I am not comfortable writing explicit sexual content and Skeppy has stated that he is not comfortable with it being written about him either. The mature rating I have placed on this work is present for other reasons.
> 
> I’m probably over-rating it, but I am the author and I have my own reasons for doing so. At the end of the day this is my work and I get to make the final decision.
> 
> Content warnings will be utilized in the opening notes to relevant chapters. I personally do not differentiate between content and trigger warnings, but please think of yourself first and stay safe. Don’t force yourself to read if there’s anything that might make you regret doing so later.
> 
> Lastly, to close out the introduction: this work should not be used as an excuse to make either of the individuals featured in it uncomfortable. If that particular path of action is taken then I will likely end up acting accordingly and either privatizing or deleting this work altogether. Thank you for reading.
> 
> Tl;dr: The author talks too much. You know the basics for this sort of thing.

It had been a long day, to say the least.

Despite it only being a few minutes past noon, Darryl Noveschosch was currently having to use the few ounces of willpower he had left to resist the urge to set his head down on the counter in front of him and fall asleep. He’d made the mistake of pulling an all-nighter the night before, meaning that it had been approximately forty-five hours since he’d last crashed, give or take. 

That probably wasn’t healthy. 

He made a mental note to try and get a couple of hours in as soon as he got home. 

Unfortunately, glancing up at the clock on the opposite wall of the small, cramped store revealed that only three minutes had passed since the last time he’d checked.

It wasn’t as if there were any customers at this hour anyway. Their main customer base had always consisted of students and people with day jobs, so it really didn’t make much sense to keep the store open like this all day every day. All that that did was waste money keeping the lights on and encourage lurkers. 

Darryl didn’t know much about running a business, but over the past couple of months that he’d been working at this no-name computer parts and repair store he’d been getting the feeling that his employers didn’t have the slightest idea what they were doing either. It paid about twice what he’d been getting before doing freelance programming work though, so he wasn’t about to complain. It was a pretty alright job, all things considered. 

The only real drawback to working at a place where part of the duties involved dealing with people was...well, people. He'd applied for the job opening here to work with machines, not to sit behind a register and hold conversations. That was why he preferred working the shifts where there weren’t any customers.

If there wasn’t anyone around, there wouldn’t be anyone to talk to. It was a good system for the most part.

_ Not a foolproof one, though,  _ he found himself musing as his eyes found their way back to the only other person in the building, a dark-haired young man currently flipping through an outdated catalogue and looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. 

Normally this sort of thing wouldn’t be a problem of any sort, but the stranger had been sitting there for around three hours. Aside from glancing around at a few of the used computers when he’d first walked in, he hadn’t shown any interest in buying anything either. 

He’d just been...sitting there.

He hadn’t done anything wrong, exactly, but there was something unsettling about his presence all the same. It was different. Unexpected. 

It had been three hours since the man had entered the store, and not a single word had passed between the two of them in that time. Every passing minute only served to emphasize the silence even further.

_ Do I say something? _

Loiterers weren’t anything that he hadn’t seen before, but he’d never had to deal with them during the daytime. He’d never had to deal with them alone either. 

The man looked harmless enough. A bit too nicely dressed to justify sitting alone in a place like this in his opinion, but something about the way he held himself seemed to indicate that the clothes he had on weren’t anything out of the ordinary for him. Between that and the fact that he’d never seen him around town before, Darryl decided that it wouldn’t be that far of a reach to assume that he wasn’t from around these parts. He’d managed to rationalize that around an hour ago, but unfortunately that had only left him with more questions.

It didn’t really matter where he’d come from or why he was there, but it was something to wonder about. A small source of distraction to help stave off a little bit of his exhaustion. 

The other man clearly hadn’t come to shop, but maybe he was visiting someone. Maybe his car had broken down and he was waiting for a call back from an insurance company. A thousand hypothetical stories flitted through Darryl’s mind lazilly as he watched the stranger’s hand move to turn the page for what must’ve been the hundredth time that morning.

It felt strange watching someone like this, but there wasn’t anything else left to do. There weren’t any devices in for repairs and he’d already done everything else he possibly could have as far as his assigned duties had gone. He’d even done a full inventory of spare parts, something that hadn’t been done for six months according to the dusty clipboard in the back room.

Outside, the sun was nowhere to be seen. A gapless blanket of clouds had draped itself across the world below, dimming its colors and softening it at the edges. Individual passersby were far and few between, and even the cars seemed to be driving at a slower pace. Looking at anything outside of these four walls would be to surrender himself to the sopor of everything else surrounding him. That’s what he told himself, at least. Even if it was more than a little bit strange for him to be spending this much time watching someone like this, it wasn’t like they’d ever see each other again. In the unlikely event that they ever did, most people tended to see people in jobs like his as faceless automatons without lives or thoughts of their own.

It wasn’t pleasant, but it was the truth. Something in Darryl’s chest ached slightly with the realization. Reaching out to other people and making connections would be so easy, but imagined conversations hurt so much less. He’d lived this way for the past three years and was happy with his decision more often than not. Life as a passive observer meant less friction with the world around him, even if it meant that there wasn’t ever anything to hold onto.

Another hour passed in silence without anyone else entering the store, and Darryl found himself idly wondering if he should even trust himself to drive home in his current state. Something in the back of his head was throbbing, but there was only an hour or so left in his shift. 

A sense of fragile unreality encapsulated the moment, permeable as cobweb. It would be so easy to do something, anything to affect the scene around him. It wouldn’t matter in the long run. There wouldn't be any harm in it, just a little bit of wasted time and energy. 

He could afford that much if he wanted to. He knew he could.

The thought almost made him laugh, already knowing that he wouldn’t.

_ What would I even say?  _

* * *

Withdrawing from the world was easier than it seemed. It wasn’t as lonely as he’d expected either, despite having cut almost all ties with anyone he’d known before he’d done it. Maybe it’d been because he had no intention of staying like this forever, but he’d never really minded being alone too much. He’d never been the most sociable person, after all. He was fine with being alone most of the time. 

It was only natural to feel differently on occasion, but the feeling always passed eventually. He had his dog, he had his family, and he had his work. There was more than enough in his life to make it feel full. Other people were distracting and unpredictable. To interact with anyone would be to invite an unpredictable element into an otherwise carefully controlled environment.

The exhaustion clouding Darryl’s senses didn’t seem to care for his reasoning, though. Maybe he was lonely, somewhere deeper down than he’d bothered checking. He was only human.

It took a few moments for him to notice sound filling the room for the first time in hours; a soft, insistent buzzing that didn’t break through the quiet so much as lie beneath and amplify it. His phone was dead, so there wasn’t any way that the noise could be coming from him. 

Weariness and endless circles of thought that had been tread and retread over and over in the past few hours were actively working against him, but it still came as a surprise to Darryl when he heard his own voice asking a question. Not in his head, not in his thoughts--a real, honest to god question without thought or premeditation or any regard for the careful boundaries he’d taken such care in maintaining.

“Are you going to answer that?” 

The words were casual enough, but feeling them leave his mouth without realizing what he was doing beforehand sent a jolt of wakefulness through his mind all the same.

At least the question had been bland. Things could have been worse. Despite the fact that he’d been the one to act in a way that could be seen as initiating conversation, his words had been milquetoast at best. There wasn’t any real cause for the other man to dignify it with a response. 

He’d never been that lucky before though, and fate seemed to have decided that it’d be best to stick to old habits. From the corner of the room, a pair of brown eyes looked up briefly from the pages that they’d been fixed on for the past hour. “What?”

_ Fudge _ .

Darryl cleared his throat. “Your phone.” 

“What?” The stranger’s hand moved to remove something from his ear.

He hadn’t heard him. He’d been listening to something else. Darryl would have to repeat himself. Perfect.

“Your phone is ringing.” The shape of the words felt clumsy and awkward in his mouth, as rough and dry as sandpaper. God, he wished he hadn’t said anything. 

The other man blinked for a second as if trying to evaluate the verity of his statement. He was still holding the catalogue in one hand. “Oh.” His expression was blank, looking for all the world like he still hadn’t quite processed what the man behind the counter had said. He must’ve been entirely dead to the world around him until a moment ago. 

The noise hadn’t stopped, but eventually the stranger managed to fumble the small device out of his pocket. There was something almost funny about his movements once they began, sharp and erratic as they were. They certainly stood out more than they would have if he hadn’t been sitting as still as he had been for the past hour or so.

“Shit! Shit, shit, shit-” 

For the second time that day, Darryl found his mouth moving of its own accord. “Is everything alright?”

“Fine. Fine, it’s fine, I just-” The catalogue made a soft thud as it landed on the floor, somehow misplaced in the time it had taken for the other man to remove his phone from his pocket. “Shit.” His thumb darted across the screen.

There was a brief lapse in the stream of profanity after that, leaving Darryl unsure of how to respond. 

Unsure of whether or not he should, really.

“Shit!”

Trying to re-engage in the conversation was seeming less and less appealing by the minute. Whatever was going on with this guy was absolutely not something that he felt like dealing with this close to the end of his shift. Any charm or existential melancholy that he’d inspired in him ended the moment he’d opened his mouth.

It wasn’t surprising that the stranger’s exit was graceless as the rest of him. Even if it wasn’t anything more than basic courtesy, the sheer amount of effort it took to suppress the urge to laugh as the man stumbled out onto the street was exhausting. “Have a nice day!” Darryl called. No one was around to hear it, but the gesture was the only thing that mattered. It was as empty as the store it was addressed to.

The rest of his shift passed in silence. Not quite the same as the way it had been before, but the familiarity of it felt right in a way that most things rarely did. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this work is taken from the lyrics of the song “feelings are fatal” by mxmtoon, in case anyone was wondering. 
> 
> I already have the ending and certain key portions of this fic written out/planned, but suggestions, comments, and predictions are always welcome. I have a general idea of how long it will be when it’s complete, but am not sure how long this work will take to publish in its entirety.  
> In the extremely unlikely event that the fandom at large finds this work, first of all--hello. I’ve been lurking for a while. I have no intentions of making any sort of an account on any platform to interact apart from this, but I’ve enjoyed watching you from afar for a while now. I hope that this work can inspire at least a small fraction of the happiness you have given me in the rest of you.
> 
> P.S.: To the person who when the community asked for their own fic in the same vein as Heat Waves decided to simply copy and paste the work, go fuck yourself.


End file.
